There is an urgent need to train a cohort of professionals who
can address and resolve the increasing number of fundamental failings in
the global food system. The solutions to these systemic failings go far
beyond the production of food, and are embedded within broad political,
economic, business, social, cultural and environmental contexts. The
challenge of developing efficient, socially acceptable and sustainable food
systems that meet the demands of a growing global population can only
be tackled through an interdisciplinary systems approach that integrates
social, economic and environmental dimensions. The new crossinstitutional training programme, IFSTAL (Innovative Food Systems
Teaching and Learning), is designed to improve post-graduate level
knowledge and understanding of food systems from a much broader
interdisciplinary perspective, which can be applied to students’ own
studies. Ultimately, these graduates should be equipped to apply critical
interdisciplinary systems thinking in the workplace to understand how
problems are connected, their root causes and where critical leverage
points might be. This article outlines the programme and presents a
review of its first year (2015-2016 academic year).
